Resisting System: Britain, Buffon, And The Avoidance of Linnaeus

Abstract

It is a commonplace of science (although less of the history of science) that Linnaeus definitively solved the vexing problems of taxonomy and nomenclature in the 18th century, thus freeing subsequent researchers to focus on more challenging problems. In fact the reception of the Linnaean system was slow and incomplete at the time, and much of his work was subsequently superseded. There were many sceptics among British naturalists, and examination of their responses to Linnaeus can illuminate both the nature of his work, and the social and intellectual contexts of contemporary natural history. It was generally accepted that the study of plants and animals required some kind of order--the mere accumulation of miscellaneous facts was no longer satisfactory. There were two main alternatives. One was nationalistic and relatively superficial--to accept the Linnaean agenda, but to suggest that it had been accomplished earlier and/or better by British scholars (John Ray was the most frequent, but not the only candidate for this honor). The other was to prefer a non-Linnaean mode of ordering--that is, a way of organizing the plant and animal kingdom that employed apparently different principles, often one that acknowledged more obvious and familiar differences and familiarities. These anti-systematists (as they often misleadingly called themselves) were inclined to rally behind the countervailing authority and prestige of Buffon. Buffon also figured cryptically in merely nationalistic anti-Linnaeanism, through the mechanism of unacknowledged borrowing.